Venom Zest seems too good to pass up if Rogues are going to be energy starved at low gear levels again. Of course it is early in the Alpha and things could change, but right now on paper Venom Zest looks like the go to talent for many aspects. It is appealing for PVE, PVP and as a leveling talent.

Venom Zest seems too good to pass up if Rogues are going to be energy starved at low gear levels again. Of course it is early in the Alpha and things could change, but right now on paper Venom Zest looks like the go to talent for many aspects. It is appealing for PVE, PVP and as a leveling talent.

Pretty sure venom zest won't be too good at low gear levels since it's a % based ability and at low gear there's not going to be much of a value to get a % off. Plus like I said in another spec classes like assassination and sub who don't stack haste as heavily as combat does and gets most of their energy regen through different mechanics won't get much out of the ability.

With 18.5k haste (which is levels you won't hit for a long time in WoD) 5% energy regen gives all of 0.86 per second energy regen. Over 1 minute that gives you 51.6 energy so roughly single target venom zest gives you 1 extra sinister strike or with 3 targets up constantly 3 sinister strikes. And mind you that's with combat purely gearing for haste. Assassination stacking mastery or agility or sub stacking agility instead will get a lot less out of that talent. I dunno... 1-3 extra sinister strikes a minute seems like an extraordinarily shitty talent.

Pretty sure that shadow reflection in all forms beats out venom zest. DfA seems like it'll either be a niche ability or the new shurken toss.

But it remains to be seen how haste plays out in regards to energy regen. I kind of personally hope that they move haste away from energy a little bit.

Stat squish doesn't mean anything it will keep your relative power. So even if 18.5k SoO is 1.85k at lv100 its the same difference. Was referencing a current power level vs. a potential power number where the actual number it self doesn't mean anything. The fact is that rogues are going to have shit energy regen come the start of WoD and 5% of shit is a lot less than 5% of good.

I really wish people would stop referencing the stat squish since of all things in WoD the stat squish is by far leaps about bounds the most inconsequential thing that's happening and by and large will have zero effect on game play.

Pretty sure venom zest won't be too good at low gear levels since it's a % based ability and at low gear there's not going to be much of a value to get a % off. Plus like I said in another spec classes like assassination and sub who don't stack haste as heavily as combat does and gets most of their energy regen through different mechanics won't get much out of the ability.

With 18.5k haste (which is levels you won't hit for a long time in WoD) 5% energy regen gives all of 0.86 per second energy regen. Over 1 minute that gives you 51.6 energy so roughly single target venom zest gives you 1 extra sinister strike or with 3 targets up constantly 3 sinister strikes. And mind you that's with combat purely gearing for haste. Assassination stacking mastery or agility or sub stacking agility instead will get a lot less out of that talent. I dunno... 1-3 extra sinister strikes a minute seems like an extraordinarily shitty talent.

Pretty sure that shadow reflection in all forms beats out venom zest. DfA seems like it'll either be a niche ability or the new shurken toss.

Shadow Reflection is based off of specials only as far as we know. As it does not copy poisons or auto attacks. The more I think about Shadow Reflection the more I realize that only Combat can truly utilize it the most because Killing Spree is considered a series of yellow attacks. But Shadow Reflection is a two minute cool down in a game design that is moving away from cool down stacking supposedly so I think Venom Zest is the safer bet.

Shadow Reflection is based off of specials only as far as we know. As it does not copy poisons or auto attacks. The more I think about Shadow Reflection the more I realize that only Combat can truly utilize it the most because Killing Spree is considered a series of yellow attacks. But Shadow Reflection is a two minute cool down in a game design that is moving away from cool down stacking supposedly so I think Venom Zest is the safer bet.

Would probably save shadow reflections to line up with CDs. Sub should get some good use out of it with dance spambush/evis spam and it should copy over it's damage while find weakness is up so it should be hitting pretty hard too.

Also, with the new stat bonus's pushing people towards certain stats aka mastery for assassination I have a feeling that venom zest will also only be "good" for combat and by "good" I mean still pretty shitty. We're going to have more stats than ever to wade through with current gear and it will probably be even harder to find those ideal pieces. Currently most gear out there is by the big 3 being haste/crit/mastery based with some having hit/exp on them but those being a lot fewer. But, with the new multistrike/whatever that other stat is going to be there's going to be a pretty good chance between 5 main stats to not find pieces with haste on it. And, since they're taking out reforging it'll make getting those stats a lot harder. Even attempting to get haste on every piece of gear it's going to be a lot harder to attempt that so maybe bis end game gear it might be worth it since it's percentage based and might scale enough but I doubt it. They really need to retune it to make it worth it especially at lower gear levels. Look at fresh 90's now with timeless gear. Not the best optomised not many sockets. Going to be similar to that come the first raid tier of WoD and with no reforging it's going to be really hard to get that haste stat.

. Going to be similar to that come the first raid tier of WoD and with no reforging it's going to be really hard to get that haste stat.

From what they've said customizing stats is now done through enchanting/food/flasks all of those will be secondary stats. At lvl 100 it currently takes 80 haste for 1% if you enchanted all haste that's 540 then flask is 128 and food is 125 so 793 or 10%ish haste then there's the 5% haste buff which is real haste for us now. So before any haste on gear you have 15% haste problem is that only combat will enchanting/food/flask like that so assassination and sub will likely have awful haste unless lucky on gear.

But on the other side of this assassination with all this done in mastery + the mastery buff will have 69.8% mastery with no mastery on gear.

Shadow Reflection is based off of specials only as far as we know. As it does not copy poisons or auto attacks. The more I think about Shadow Reflection the more I realize that only Combat can truly utilize it the most because Killing Spree is considered a series of yellow attacks. But Shadow Reflection is a two minute cool down in a game design that is moving away from cool down stacking supposedly so I think Venom Zest is the safer bet.

Yeah, and? Like he said, venom zest is roughly 1 SS per min per target so with optimal targets you get 6 in the time of a SR cooldown. However, SR can copy KS, get significantly more than 6 attacks during AR with the gcd reduction and extra energy, copy ambush spam during dances, etc. Even for sustained 3 target situations (and I doubt many fights have 3 targets up for you even 75% of the time), SR seems to win out. And dont forget that while SR updates dynamically with buffs, that doesn't mean you can't time it to mirror your cds with potion or if they still have 20 sec trinket procs those too, but you won't be able to dump the extra venom zest attacks all into an awesome dps opportunity like that.

DfA sadly seems even crappier. Maybe they want us to take it for pvp because it is a mini shadowstep?

New animations are way cooler than first ones, and kinda expected that the quality would have risen much higher since we're still at alpha stage.

Anyway, a new flashy talent doesn't make up for everything else. Also, if numbers are not tweaked accordingly, it's entirely possible that DfA will be just ingored in favor of a better talent (something like happened with Anticipation, and even with MfD the choice is really limited).

EDIT: edited quote, because the animation itself is really good. I'm also happy that someone finds rogue "changes" appealing, maybe i'm just too old for all this :P

Rogues overall look to be in a good spot in PVE and PVP heading into WoD.

The main concerns I have is in regards to the talent tree, and to a lesser extent the glyphs:

*The level 45 tier I am not really satisfied with because I believe there is room for improvement when it comes to Cheat Death and Leeching Poison. I think the fact that Crippling is the only non lethal that Rogues have now only reinforces the point that Leeching should just be base-lined IMO.

*The level 60 tier is really problematic in that CnD is really underwhelming when compared to Shadow Step and BoS. But I think the fact that you have to wait till level 60 for any decent mobility seems off in my opinion. Doing leveling dungeons as a Rogue sub 60 you feel like you are always trailing your group and only a few steps ahead of a Warlock in five mans. The occasional sprint helps but it is a 1 minute cool down. I believe that if the do nerf BoS they need to look at Sprint (lowering cool down again) so more people would be inclined to consider CnD and Shadow Step.

*Level 75 tier just doesn't seem to offer enough value for PVE players overall. With that said Dirty Tricks is simply in need of a serious buff.

*Level 90 tier doesn't make sense given the direction they are going for in WoD. Anticipation is a no brainer to be base-lined along with Leeching.

*Level 100 tier needs a lot of work and lets hope they are receptive of addressing these issues:

-Venom Zest seems more like something you would expect to be merged with Dirty Tricks but right now it is a talent that all specs can benefit from which is why it is the most reasonable talent despite being so ordinary. It works. Yay!

-Shadow Reflection seems to have a lot of issues so it will be interesting to see how they tune around some of the limitations to make it intriguing for all three Rogue specs.

-Death from Above suffers from ALL the issues early Killing Spree had: 1. CC'd during the animation 2. Reaching a target but not doing the damage 3.LoS issues

Given DfA energy, cool down,and combo point cost I think being immune during the animation seems a reasonable starting point. The damage is good and each spec can find it beneficial to use.

Now, moving onto the glyphs:

*Glyph of Blind and Glyph of HV seems like two glyphs that should be base-lined in my opinion.